Skin Game (3 page)

“Hades,” I said. “
The
Hades. The Greek god.”

“The very same.”

I looked slowly from Nicodemus to Mab.

Her face was beautiful and absolute. The chill of the little earring that was keeping me alive pulsed steadily against my skin.

“Oh,” I said quietly. “Oh, Hell’s bells.”

M
y brain shifted into overdrive.

My back might have been against a wall, but that was hardly anything new. One thing I’d learned in long years of spine-to-brick circumstance was that anything you could do to create a little space, time, or support was worth doing.

I met Mab’s implacable gaze and said, “It is necessary to set one condition.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What condition?”

“Backup,” I said. “I want an extra pair of eyes along. Someone of my choosing.”

“Why?”

“Because Nicodemus is a murderous murdering murderer,” I said. “And if he’s picking a crew, they’re going to be just as bad. I want another set of eyes along to make sure one of them doesn’t shoot me in the back the second I’m not looking—you’re loaning out the Winter Knight, after all. You’re not throwing him away.”

Mab arched an eyebrow. “Mmmm.”

“Out of the question, I fear,” Nicodemus said. “Plans have already been made and there is no room for extraneous personnel.”

Mab turned her head very slowly to Nicodemus. “As I remember it,” she said, her tone arctic, “when you loaned me your service, you brought your spawn with you. I believe this request exhibits symmetry.”

Nicodemus narrowed his eyes. Then he inhaled deeply and inclined
his head very slightly in agreement. “I do not have explicit authority over everyone involved. I can make no promises as to the safety of either your Knight or his . . . additional associate.”

Mab almost smiled. “And I can make none as to yours, Sir Archleone, should you betray an arrangement made in good faith. Shall we agree to an explicit truce until such time as your mission is complete?”

Nicodemus considered that for a moment before nodding his head. “Agreed.”

“Done, then,” Mab said, and plucked the card from my fingers. “Shall we go, my Knight?”

I stared hard at Nicodemus and his bloody-mouthed daughter for a moment. Deirdre’s hair rasped and rustled, slithering against itself like long, curling strips of sheet metal.

Like hell was I gonna help that lunatic.

But this was not the time or place to make that stand.

“Yeah,” I said through clenched teeth. “Okay.”

And without ever quite turning my back on the Denarians, I followed Mab back to the elevator.

* * *

At the bottom of the elevator ride, I turned to Mab’s bodyguards and said, “Time for you guys to get out and bring the car around.” When none of them moved, I said, “Okay. You guys filled out some kind of paperwork for how you want your remains disposed of, right?”

At that, the Sidhe blinked. They looked at Mab.

Mab stared ahead. I’d seen statues that indicated their desires more strongly.

They got out.

I waited until the elevator doors closed behind them, flicked a finger, and muttered,
“Hexus,”
unleashing a minor effort of will as I did. Mortal wizards and technology don’t blend. Just being in proximity to a wizard actively using magic is enough to blow out a lot of electronics. When a wizard is actually
trying
to blow out tech, not much is safe.

The elevator’s control panel let out a shower of sparks and went dark. The lightbulbs went out with little pops, along with the emergency
lights, and the elevator’s interior was suddenly plunged into darkness lit only by a bit of daylight seeping in beneath the door.

“Are you out of your
mind
?” I demanded of Mab.

Quietly.

There was just enough light to show me the glitter of her eyes as she turned them to me.

“I am
not
going to help that dick,” I snarled.

“You will perform precisely as instructed.”

“I will
not
,” I said. “I know how he works. Whatever he’s doing, it’s nothing but bad news. People are going to get hurt—and I’m not going to be a part of that. I’m not going to help him.”

“It is obvious to me that you did not listen to me very carefully,” Mab said.

“It is obvious to me that you just don’t
get it
,” I replied. “There are things you just don’t do, Mab. Helping a monster like that get what he wants is one of them.”

“Even if refusing costs you your life?” she asked.

I sighed. “Have you even been paying attention, the past couple of years? Do
you
have any doubt that I would rather die than become part of something like that?”

Her teeth made a white gleam in the dark. “And yet, here you are.”

“Do you really want to push this?” I asked. “Do you want to lose your shiny new Knight already?”

“Hardly a loss if he will not fulfill a simple command,” Mab said.

“I’ll fulfill commands. I’ve done it before.”

“In your own inept way, yes,” Mab said.

“Just not this one.”

“You will do precisely as instructed,” Mab said. She took a very small step closer to me. “Or there will be consequences.”

I swallowed.

The last Knight to anger Mab had wound up begging me to end his life. The poor bastard had been
grateful
.

“What consequences?” I asked.

“The parasite,” Mab said. “When it kills you and emerges, it will seek
out everyone you know. Everyone you love. And it will utterly destroy them—starting with one child in particular.”

Gooseflesh erupted along my arms. She was talking about Maggie. My daughter.

“She’s out of this,” I said in a whisper. “She’s protected.”

“Not from this,” Mab said, her tone remote. “Not from a being created of your own essence, just as she is. Your death will bring a deadly creature into the world, my Knight—one who knows all that you know of your allies. Lovers. Family.”

“No, it won’t,” I said. “I’ll go back to the island. I’ll instruct Alfred to imprison it the moment it breaks free.”

Mab’s smile turned genuine. It was considerably scarier than her glare. “Oh, sweet child.” She shook her head. “What makes you think I shall allow you to return?”

I clenched my fists along with my teeth. “You . . . you
bitch
.”

Mab slapped me.

Okay, that doesn’t convey what happened very well. Her arm moved. Her palm hit my left cheekbone, and an instant later the right side of my skull smashed into the elevator door. My head bounced off it like a Ping-Pong ball, my legs went rubbery, and I got a really, really good look at the marble tile floor of the elevator. The metal rang like a gong, and was still reverberating a couple of minutes later, when I slowly sat up. Or maybe that was just me.

“I welcome your suggestions, questions, thoughts, and arguments, my Knight,” Mab said in a calm voice. She moved one foot, gracefully, and rested the tip of her high heel against my throat. She put a very little bit of her weight behind it, and it hurt like hell. “But I am
Mab
, mortal. It is not your place to judge
me
. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t talk, with her heel nudging my voice box. I jerked my head in a short nod.

“Defy me if you will,” she said. “I cannot prevent you from doing so—if you are willing to pay the price for it.”

And with that, she removed her foot from my throat.

I sat up and rubbed at it. “This is not a smart way to maintain a good professional relationship with me,” I croaked.

“Do I seem stupid to you, my Knight?” she asked. “Think.”

I eyed her. Mab’s voice was perfectly calm. After what I’d said to her, the defiance I’d offered her, I hadn’t expected that. She had never been shy about showing her outrage when she felt it had been earned. This perfect poise was . . . not out of character, precisely, but I had expected a good deal more intensity than she was displaying. My defiance endangered her plans, and that never left her in a good mood.

Unless . . .

I closed my eyes and ran back through her words in my head.

“Your precise instructions,” I said slowly, “were to go with Nicodemus and help him until such time as he completed his objective.”

“Indeed,” Mab said. “Which he stated was to remove the contents of a vault.” She leaned down, took a fistful of my shirt in her hand, and hauled me back to my feet as easily as she might heft a Chihuahua. “I never said what you would do after.”

I blinked at that. Several times. “You . . .” I dropped my voice. “You want me to double-cross him?”

“I expect you to repay my debt by fulfilling my instructions,” Mab replied. “After that . . .” Her smile returned, smug in the shadows. “I expect you to be yourself.”

“Whatever Nicodemus has going this time . . . you want to stop him, too,” I breathed.

She tilted her head, very slightly.

“You know he’s not going to honor the truce,” I said quietly. “He’s going to try to take me out somewhere along the line. He’s going to betray me.”

“Of course,” she said. “I expect superior, more creative treachery on your part.”

“While still keeping your word and helping him?” I demanded.

Her smile sharpened. “Is it not quite the game?” she asked. “In my younger days, I would have relished such a novel challenge.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Gee. Thanks.”

“Petulance does not become the Winter Knight,” Mab said. She turned to the elevator doors, which had an enormous dent in them the same shape as a wizard’s noggin. They swept open with a groan of
protesting metal. “Do this for me, and I shall ensure the safe removal of the parasite when the task is completed.”

“Nicodemus, his daughter, and God knows what else is in his crew,” I said. “I’m working with my hands tied, and you expect me to survive this game?”

“If you want to live, if you want your friends and family to live, I expect you to do more than survive it,” Mab said, sweeping out. “I expect you to skin them alive.”

“T
o Mab’s credit,” Karrin Murphy said, “she
is
sort of asking you to do what you’re good at.”

I blinked. “What is
that
supposed to mean?”

“You have a tendency to weasel out of these bargains you get yourself into, Harry,” she said. “You have a history.”

“Like I shouldn’t fight them?” I demanded.

“You probably should focus more on not getting into them in the first place,” she said, “but that’s just one humble ex-cop’s opinion.”

We were sitting in Karrin’s living room, in the little house with the rose garden she’d inherited from her grandmother. She was sipping tea, her spring-muscle body coiled up into a lazy-looking ball at one end of the couch. I sat in the chair across from her. My big grey cat, Mister, was sprawled in my lap, luxuriating and purring while I rubbed his fur.

“You’ve taken good care of him,” I said. “Thank you.”

“He’s good company,” she said. “Though I wonder if he wouldn’t like it better with you.”

I moved from Mister’s back to rubbing behind his ears exactly the way he liked best. His purr sounded like a miniature motorboat. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the little furball until he’d come running up and thrown his shoulder against my shins. Mister weighed the next best thing to thirty pounds. I wondered how the diminutive Karrin had managed to keep from being knocked down by his affection every time
she came home. Maybe she had applied some principle of Aikido out of self-defense.

“He might,” I said. “I’m . . . sort of settled now. And there’s nothing on the island big enough to take him. But it’s cold out there in the winter, and he’s getting older.”

“We’re all getting older,” Karrin said. “Besides. Look at him.”

Mister rolled onto his back and chewed happily at my fingertips, pawing at my arms and hands with his limbs without extending his claws. Granted, he was a battle-scarred old tomcat with a stub tail and a notched ear, but damn if it wasn’t cute, and I suddenly felt my eyes threaten to get blurry.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s kind of my buddy, isn’t he?”

Karrin’s blue eyes smiled at me over the rim of her teacup. Only attitude kept her from being an itty-bitty person. Her golden brown hair was longer than it had been since I could remember offhand, tied back into a ponytail. She wore yoga pants, a tank top, and a flannel shirt and had been practicing martial arts forms of some kind when I arrived.

“Of course,” she said, “you could do it the other way, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could live here,” she said. Then added, a beat too quickly, “In Chicago. You could, you know. Move back to town.”

I frowned, still playing with my cat. “I don’t . . . Look, when the next freak burns down my place, maybe I won’t get as lucky as I did last time.”

“Last time you wound up with a broken back and working for a monster,” Karrin said.

“Exactly,” I said. “And it was only because of literal divine intervention that none of my neighbors died.” I shook my head. “The island isn’t a kind place, but no one is going to come looking for trouble there.”

“Except you,” she said gently. “I worry about what will happen to you if you stay out there alone too long. That kind of isolation isn’t good for you, Harry.”

“It’s necessary,” I said. “It’s safer for me. It’s safer for everyone around me.”

“What a load of crap,” she said, without heat. “You’re just scared.”

“You’re damned right,” I said. “Scared that some bug-eyed freak is
going to come calling and kill innocent people because they happen to be in my havoc radius.”

“No,” she said. “That isn’t what scares you.” She waved a hand. “You don’t want it to happen, and you’ll fight it if it does, but that isn’t what scares you.”

I frowned down at Mister. “I’m . . . really not comfortable talking about this.”

“Get over it,” Karrin said, even more gently. “Harry, when the vampires grabbed Maggie . . . they kind of dismantled your life. They took away all the familiar things. Your office. Your home. Even that ridiculous old clown car.”

“The
Blue Beetle
was not a clown car,” I said severely. “It was a machine of justice.”

I wasn’t looking at her, but I heard the smile in her voice—along with something that might have been compassion. “You’re a creature of habit, Harry. And they took away all the familiar places and things in your life. They hurt you.”

Something dark and furious stirred way down inside me for a moment, threatening to come out. I swallowed it back down.

“So the idea of a fortress, someplace familiar that can’t be taken away from you, really appeals to you right now,” Karrin said. “Even if it means you cut yourself off from everyone.”

“It isn’t like that,” I said.

It wasn’t.

Was it?

“And I’m fine,” I added.

“You aren’t fine,” Karrin said evenly. “You’re a long, long way from fine. And you’ve got to know that.”

Mister’s fur was soft and very warm beneath my fingers. His paws batted gently at my hands. His teeth were sharp but gentle on my wrist. I’d forgotten how nice it was, the furry beast’s simple weight and presence against me.

How could I have forgotten that?

(“I’m only human.”)

(“For now.”)

I shook my head slowly. “This is . . . not a good time to get in touch with my feelings.”

“I know it isn’t,” she said. “But it’s the first time in months that I’ve seen you. What if I don’t get another chance?” She put the cup of tea down on a coaster on the coffee table and said, “Agreed, there’s business to do. But you’ve got to understand that your friends are worried about you. And that is important, too.”

“My friends,” I said. “So this is . . . a community project?”

Karrin stared at me for a moment. Then she stood up and moved to stand beside the chair. She considered me for a few breaths, then pushed my hair back from my eyes with one hand, and said, “It’s me, Harry.”

I felt my eyes close. I leaned in to her touch. Her hand felt feverishly warm, a wild contrast to the brush of Mab’s cold digits earlier in the day. We stayed like that for a moment, and Mister’s throaty purr buzzed through the room.

There’s power in the touch of another person’s hand. We acknowledge it in little ways, all the time. There’s a reason human beings shake hands, hold hands, slap hands, bump hands.

It comes from our very earliest memories, when we all come into the world blinded by light and color, deafened by riotous sound, flailing in a suddenly cavernous space without any way of orienting ourselves, shuddering with cold, emptied with hunger, and justifiably frightened and confused. And what changes that first horror, that original state of terror?

The touch of another person’s hands.

Hands that wrap us in warmth, that hold us close. Hands that guide us to shelter, to comfort, to food. Hands that hold and touch and reassure us through our very first crisis, and guide us into our very first shelter from pain. The first thing we ever learn is that the touch of someone else’s hand can ease pain and make things better.

That’s power. That’s power so fundamental that most people never even realize it exists.

I leaned my head against Karrin’s hand and shivered again. “Okay,” I said quietly. “Okay. This is important, too.”

“Good,” she said. She left her fingers in my hair for another moment, and then withdrew her hand. She picked up my teacup, and hers, and
carried them back to the kitchen. “So. Where did you go after you left the Hard Rock?”

“Hmm?” I asked.

Her voice drifted in from the kitchen. “Given what you told me, you left the meeting with Nicodemus about three hours ago. Where have you been since then?”

“Um,” I said. “Yeah, about that.”

She came back into the room and arched a golden eyebrow at me.

“What if I told you that I needed you to trust me?”

She frowned and tilted her head for a moment before the hint of a smile touched her mouth. “You went digging for information, didn’t you?”

“Um,” I said. “Let’s just say that until I know more about what I’m up against, I’m playing things a lot closer to the chest than usual.”

She frowned. “Tell me you aren’t doing it for my own protection.”

“You’d kick my ass,” I said. “I’m doing it for
mine
.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I think.”

“Don’t thank me,” I said. “I’m still keeping you in the dark. But I believe it’s absolutely necessary.”

“So you need me to trust you.”

“Yeah.”

She spread her hands. “Yeah, okay. So what’s the play? I assume you want me to assemble the support team and await developments while you and Thomas go play with the bad guys?”

I shook my head. “Hell, no. I want you to go in with me.”

That shocked her silent for a moment. Her eyes widened slightly. “With you. To rob a Greek god.”

“Burgle, technically,” I said. “I’m pretty sure if you pull a gun on Hades, you deserve whatever happens to you.”

“Why me?” she asked. “Thomas is the one with the knives and the superstrength.”

“I don’t need knives and superstrength,” I said. “What’s the first rule to protecting yourself on the street?”

“Awareness,” she replied instantly. “It doesn’t matter how badass you are. If you don’t see it coming, you can’t do anything about it.”

“Exactly,” I said. “I need you because you
don’t
have supernatural abilities. You never have. You’ve never relied on them. I need extra eyes. I need to see things happening, someone to watch my back, to notice details. You’re the detective who could see that the supernatural was real when everyone else was explaining it away. You’ve squared off against the worst and you’re still here to talk about it. You’ve got the best eyes of anyone I know.”

Karrin took that in for a moment and then nodded slowly. “And . . . you think I’m crazy enough to actually do it?”

“I need you,” I said simply.

She considered that gravely.

“I’ll get my gun,” she said.